When Honesty Isn't Enough
by hiddeninthedarknessofdaylight
Summary: She'd never been desperate - not even when she thought there was no way out. But that was then. Now was different. Somehow she'd always thought her life would turn out differently. PLEASE REVIEW! flames welcome
1. Chapter 1

Her thoughts fell into the rhythm of footsteps as the steady beat of her heels against the concrete filled her mind and penetrated the thick walls she had erected to keep herself out. There were too many things she had no desire to remember – well, only one thing, but it was more than enough to tear her apart from the inside out.

Acutely feeling how alone she really was in the world, she shrank further into the bulky wool coat a man on the street had given her not long ago. She lived among the wretched, dirty, and perverted of Gotham City, sleeping in the gutters and dumpsters as they did, eating half-consumed goods that weren't fit for a dog's stomach to suffer through – but she was never one of them. No matter how much she tried to integrate herself into their society, forced by the necessity of circumstance, her memories and her thoughts set her apart from them. Her eyes were haunted rather than desperate; her attitude was fierce rather than resigned. She could blend in with the darkness of poverty, but it was all an illusion, shattered by anyone who dared to look more closely.

Her ears, sharpened by the silence of the night, picked up a slight scraping sound behind her. She listened harder, ignoring her echoing footsteps and steady heartbeat in an attempt to locate the source of the sound. Ragged breathing, saliva slipping down the throat, the too-familiar stench of unwashed skin. The scraping sound reached her again, this time closer – shoulder against brick rather than shoes on concrete. She waited, noticing the appearance of additional sounds as she continued the steady rhythm of her footsteps. Closer.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the shadow – the figure of a man raising his arm, a gun in his hand. A smile touched her lips, irony and irritation rendering her more amused than frightened. Another man in desperation. Another man trying futilely to find his way out.

She turned before he could say anything, immediately making eye contact with the man. She took in the worn, beaten condition of his clothes, the tired slump of his shoulders, the dull, world-weary gleam in his dark eyes. But the gun he held in his hand, poised steadily for the kill, shone with an evil, almost unearthly light.

"What do you want?" she demanded, her voice soft and dark.

The man smiled grimly as he replied. "You know. The boss's not too happy with you right now."

"I can't imagine why," she countered, knowing full well the game she was about to play and the consequences of losing. "He's already sent his retribution my way. He can't threaten me anymore – he's taken away all my reasons to fear him. So now what? He's gonna kill me before word gets out that I got away? What's your real reason for coming here?"

His only response was to cock the gun. She tensed, waiting. "So how much did say he was gonna pay you?" she asked, taunting him, teasing. "You think he'll pay up this time?" Nothing happened. "Has he ever before?"

"Shut up."

"Why don't you just shoot me if you want me to shut up?" she asked, taking a step closer. "Stain your hands with my blood along with the dirt on the streets. How long is his paycheck gonna last? That is, if he ever coughs it up." She continued inching closer. "Is it worth murder? Is it worth giving up what little piece of honor and goodness you've got left? Are you gonna let him take away everything you were before you came to the streets – your last bit of humanity? You'll be his animal – his pet. Is that what you want?"

She watched him falter as her words penetrated his mind. The gun sank, inch by inch, until it hung uselessly in his hand. She never lost. "He'll chase you, like he chases me. He'll send his goons after you. He'll put out rewards for your death. He'll make you afraid. But you'll be better for it. You're a better person than he is. With every minute you live, you will become a richer man than he is – richer for the moments you chose to remain human. If you have your honor, he can never beat you." She knew she had won. "You don't need the gun. Leave it here." He handed her the weapon, following it with his eyes.

"Thank you," he whispered, meeting her eyes.

She smiled, wearily but genuinely. "You should run. Get out of Gotham while you still have a chance."

He turned and left, barely reaching a jog. She looked down at the gleaming firearm in her hand. Scowling in disgust, she emptied it and scattered the pieces. "Damned mob," she muttered, reflecting. At one time, the poor on the streets had hope. Now, Falcone and his mob had taken everything form them, casting a shadow of fear on the already dim state of Gotham.

She turned the corner, coming face to face with the wrong end of a pistol. Gasping in surprise, she realized her mistake as the assassin pulled the trigger. She refused to scream – Falcone wouldn't have the pleasure of hearing her weakness before death.

"If this is heaven," she muttered, "I don't want to see Hell." God's sense of humor was overwhelming, especially if she'd died and stayed in Gotham's Narrows.

As the sound of the shot echoed in her ears, she wondered amazedly why she was still standing. There was no pain, no bright lights, or even a change in scenery.

Opening her eyes as her ears cleared, she began to realize what had happened. The gun had gone off, but someone had jumped in front of the bullet – and that someone was now standing over the inert form of her would-be assassin, unhurt and entirely whole.

"You know," she commented, feeling slightly cheated out of death. "I always thought that angels were supposed to be creatures of light, with halos and big bird's wings. Yet I see the only angel with enough balls to take care of Gotham standing in front of me with pointy things on his head and a black super-hero cape slung around his shoulders. What an eye-opener."

Her dark savior turned to face her, surprise evident on the bottom half of his face – the only part that was actually visible. "They're bat wings," he frowned.

"Do you use sonar, too?"

"For someone who just survived two brushes with death in a row, you're pretty cynical."

"The result of a lonely life in Gotham," she paused, never breaking eye contact. "So how'd you survive the bullet?"

A smile pulled at the corner of his lips. "I didn't." He pointed to a new hole in the wall. She turned her head to look, and when her attention returned to her guardian, he had already disappeared.

"My name's Sarah, by the way," she said, instinctively knowing that he was listening. "And thank you." There was no answer, but Sarah hadn't expected to receive one. She turned back to the city at night, feeling a grim, nearly deliberate hope rise up in her chest. The day when Gotham would be safe was coming – slowly, but it was coming.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun shone down upon the streets of the city, but brought no warmth with its light. Even in the day, the Narrows was still a deadly place – the alleys were still dark, the gutters still wet, the air still cold. Nothing could alleviate the depression that hung like a storm cloud over city life, blotting out the joy of the sunshine.

Nothing, that is, except the headlines in the newspapers sold in stands on every street corner. The Batman had been sighted the night before. Once again, he had foiled an attempt at drug dealing in the Narrows. This time, Falcone had landed behind bars. A sloppy sketch accompanied the bold letters at the top of the page: THE BATMAN STRIKES BACK.

Sarah smiled as she read the headline, pleased at both the Star Wars allusion and the media coverage of the caped crusader who had saved her the not long ago. She picked up one of the papers, skimming the articles briefly.

"Hey," the vendor chided. "If you're not going to buy one today, don't get my hopes up."

She grinned at the man. "If I work for you for a while today, will you give me enough money for breakfast?"

"You'd spend the whole time reading the paper, like last time," he laughed. "But I would let you work for me if I had enough money to pay for my own breakfast."

She swept her hair away from her face and began taking off her gloves. "Then let's get to work and see if we can raise enough together."

Sarah and the vendor worked together for most of the day. Sarah drew people in, taking some of the papers to the edge of the street where she called out the headlines and the prices of the papers.

"Can I get one?" a voice asked gently from behind her. Sarah spun around with a smile, her eyes lighting up at the sight of the only honorable police officer patrolling the Narrows.

"Of course, Mr. Gordon. That'll be fifty cents." She handed him the paper and nearly fainted in surprise when he handed her a five. She began rummaging around in her pockets looking for change.

"No," he laughed. "Just keep it."

"Thank you, sir," she smiled, sincerity ringing in her every word. "Thank you very much."

The officer smiled gently and went on his way, tucking another few sheets of paper underneath his right arm. He skimmed the articles and headlines as he walked along the sidewalk, feeling slightly unnerved at the latest Batman stories. His first encounter with the masked vigilante was still far too fresh in his mind, now combined with the events of the Batman's first real attack against a group of packers in the Narrows. Falcone behind bars once again, Gordon could not deny himself the slight twinge of satisfaction he had felt upon first seeing the mob leader chained to a floodlight, jacket cut to pieces, barely conscious, and muttering about some sort of creature that had attacked him in the middle of the night.

He still hadn't decided what he was going to do about the Batman. Something told him that the masked man was simply trying to help – to do the job that the police weren't doing. But he had mixed feelings about keeping his knowledge of the vigilante to himself against orders. The guilt he felt over keeping the commissioner out of the loop was beginning to get to him. Every time he went into the office, there was something there to remind him that he was hiding something. Yet, he simply could not bring himself to disclose what he knew – and what he suspected. Quietly and inconspicuously, he had begun conducting his own private investigation into the identity of the Batman. He knew that the black armor and mask could not have been cheap by any means, let alone the strange material his cape must have cost, so his search was thus far limited to the Palisades just outside the city. Although that area was still within Gotham City limits, Gordon could never quite bring himself to think of the main city and the rich-kid outskirts as two parts to the same whole.

Gordon's attention wandered momentarily, causing him to bump into a roughly dressed man trying to buy a cheap hot dog from a dirty vendor. The man's meager belongings spewed out into the street, mingling with the sewage in the gutter and the puddles left by last-week's rain.

"So sorry," the officer muttered, scrambling to pick up whatever he could salvage. The man also began retrieving what he had lost, silently accepting his losses. Gordon handed him the torn notebook and shoddy pencil he had grabbed from the street along with a few spare buttons and a photograph of a boy with his two parents.

The man kept his face hidden behind his threadbare baseball cap and muddy sweatshirt hood, not trusting himself to speak to the flustered police officer. He nodded mutely as Gordon apologized and continued to the police station, breathing a sigh of relief that he had not been recognized. He turned back to the hot dog vendor, handing him a fifty in return for the sad, wrinkly-looking food. He smiled slyly at the stunned man, conveying his message clearly without the use of unnecessary words. _Don't tell._

The vendor nodded in amazement and went back to working, doing his best to forget the face of his godsend. Bruce Wayne slipped along the street, filing away Jim Gordon's actions in the ever-expanding file he was keeping. He walked in the opposite direction of the officer, acting sufficiently humble and decrepit. This was his fifth excursion into the real world of Gotham City disguised as a poor beggar. Thus far, he had been mapping out the city that he had forgotten for seven years, taking careful note of which buildings were of similar height and which streets led where.

A blatantly cheerful voice reached his ears as he neared the next street corner. "Getchor paper here, folks! The Batman Strikes Again! Read it all right here! Just fifty cents a paper! Getchor paper here, folks!..." Occasionally pausing to sell a newspaper here and there, the voice was uninterrupted, soaring above the honking horns and screeching of cars on the streets and the hustle and bustle of passerby.

Bruce took a moment to allow the voice to register in his mind, realizing that it belonged to the same Narrows-dweller he had saved from an early death as Batman the night before. He smirked quietly to himself as he observed the tangled mess of her hair, the poor condition of her clothes, and the straight, proud set of her shoulders. Frowning, he began noticing the differences between her and the men and women that passed her by. Her smile, the firm grip of her hands, the steady stance of her feet were a stark contrast to the slobbering, bent image of the typical homeless person. Curious, he drew closer, drawing fifty cents from the bottom of his pockets.

"One, please," he muttered, just barely intelligible. He was greeted warmly by her smile and cheerful composure as she turned to make the transaction. He made eye-contact with her as she handed him the paper and was instantly stunned by the difference he perceived in her eyes. The level of maturity and understanding he found there was not unusual, but the fiery determination within their grey depths hit him like a blow to the stomach. Something clicked inside him as he suddenly realized why she was different from the others. She lived with them, ate with them – or rather didn't – shared the mud that covered their clothes and skin, but she was not one of them. He found himself relating to her, remembering his experiences over the previous years and instinctively knowing that he had looked the same way as she did now. The look in his eyes had been the same as hers.

Unnerved, yet strangely elated, by his discovery, he nodded pleasantly at her and moved on down the street. Sarah watched him leave, feeling shivers run up and down her spine as she remembered his piercing hazel – nearly green – eyes boring into her. His gaze lingered in her memory, consuming her thoughts until she didn't even realize when she stopped shouting to the street. Shaking herself from her thoughts, she continued working, though she was strangely haunted by the glimmer of understanding she had seen in the depths of his eyes in the brief moment they had met.


	3. Chapter 3

The soft and delicious smells of baguettes and pastries drifted through the air to stick pleasantly in Sarah's nose. Her stomach growled and churned hungrily as she stepped into the small corner-lot bakery just outside the Narrows. The sun was just beginning to set on the city, turning the sky a deep periwinkle color and bringing an icy chill to the air. The bakery, however, was pleasantly warm from the active ovens in the back of the room.

Sarah felt like she had stepped into another world altogether. Only the warming tingle of her fingers and toes and the quiet jingle of change in her pockets reminded her that she was still in Gotham City. The man – presumably the baker – paid little attention to Sarah's rough and dirty appearance. He smiled jovially at her, his ruddy complexion a stark contrast to his sparkling blue eyes and making his wide, toothy grin seem all the more absurd. Sarah, being a stranger to the world for most of her life, felt the distinct and comforting sensation that he had been waiting specifically for her to step through the door. Of course, she thought to herself, that was complete nonsense – but it felt good anyway.

"How can I help you this fine evening?" he boomed, his glorious voice pounding happily against the walls.

Sarah eyed the rows of pastries in the glass display case with a sick sort of desire. She knew, however, that the sugary treats were both more expensive and less filling – in short, a waste of the precious money she had earned that day. She met the baker's eyes with renewed determination.

"How much bread can I get for eight fifty?"

------ ------------------ -------

Sarah walked quickly through the dark alleys and dripping streets of the Narrows towards her destination, a bag of bread loaves swinging quietly from her hand. The sun had gone down a while ago, changing Gotham from a typical east-coast city to hell on earth within a matter of minutes.

She avoided contact with people as much as possible, the knowledge that her precious cargo would draw unwanted attention from people nearly as hungry as she. Slipping from shadow to shadow almost as if she were a ghost – only less quiet thanks to the bag – keeping to herself entirely. Her eyes scanned the sidewalks; her ears were on the alert. She refused to be stopped.

Quietly, she entered a run down apartment building, gently coaxing the rotting wooden door to swing open on its rusted hinges. The exterior of the structure was in a shambles, bricks missing from the walls, windows and shutters shattered and barely clinging to what may or may not have been their original place. As she stepped over the threshold, she was greeted by the musty, fetid smell of rotting wallpaper and glue, mildew, and fungus. Anyone from the outside world would have been appalled at the state of the complex; to Sarah, it was just someone's home. And the people who lived here were the lucky ones.

She mounted the stairs, being careful not to slip on the sodden, drooping surfaces of the steps. She skipped over the ninth stair, knowing that it would squeak loudly and not wanting to announce her presence to the entire building just yet. A smile playing lightly across her lips, she knocked softly on a door labeled 13. A child answered the door; big blue eyes in a frighteningly gaunt face underneath a mop of dirty blonde hair stared hopefully up at her.

"Hi, Matthew," Sarah smiled, hiding the bag inconspicuously behind her. "Is the rest of your family home?"

Matthew smiled, revealing several missing teeth, and nodded.

"Did you lose more teeth?" Sarah laughed, following the boy into the apartment. "For a four year old, you sure do lose a lot of those. Do you ever find them again?"

"Sure do," he replied, grinning. "They come back even bigger than they were before!" He went directly to a small kitchen that had been tacked on sometime before the Depression hit. "Mom!" he called. "Sarah's here!"

Sarah stepped into the tiled area with a grin dancing on her face. "Hi Maria," she said happily to the woman trying to change a baby's cloth diaper on the counter. The kitchen – if one could still call it a kitchen – had been redesigned by the apartment's current occupants into an extra bedroom. Maria's four older children had laid out tattered sleeping bags and cots that looked to be on their last leg around the room, which lacked any of the common appliances or furniture usually found in such an area.

"Sarah!" the older woman exclaimed, looking up from the dirty job at hand. "How are you, dear?"

"Just fine," she laughed. "But you look like you could use some help with the kids tonight."

Maria looked at herself in a piece of glass mirror someone had sloppily glued on the wall and chuckled at herself. Her wavy black hair was slipping out of the elastic band she used to hold it back and stuck up in places, making her appear like the helpless victim of static electricity. There were heavy bags underneath her once-lively dark eyes – the result of too many sleepless nights. A bruise was beginning to heal on her forehead above her right eye. Her clothes, though satisfactory in most respects, were stained and wrinkled. Her smile however, redeemed her ragged exterior and brought some extra light into the room. "I'd be glad of the help," she replied. "But I know you like to leave after a while. You really can stay, you know. It wouldn't be any trouble."

"No," Sarah stated, gently but firmly. "I couldn't do that to you right now." She felt a tug on the bag behind her as Matthew observed what she was hiding. "Ah," she said, turning to face him. "I see you've found my secret stash! I guess now I'll just have to share." She plopped the bag down on a clean space on the kitchen counter. "Dinner," she pronounced, savoring the awestruck faces of Matthew and Maria. Before long, Maria's other four children (there were six altogether) were crowding around, each eager to claim the first bit of food they'd had in a week.

As the children munched happily away on the loaves of bread, Maria and Sarah observed them from a few feet away.

"Thank you," the older women murmured. "I do everything I can for them, but sometimes it's just not enough. I don't know what I would do without you."

"It's no problem," Sarah replied, eyes fixed on the mostly-starved kids. "I had some extra money from working today. I figured I'd put it to good use."

"Have you eaten today?"

"Of course," Sarah lied. "I had some of a hot dog for lunch – today's employer's treat." Her stomach's protesting rumble, however, gave her away.

"Sarah," Maria chided.

"They need it more than I do," was the soft reply. "I'll eat tomorrow. I'm not desperate yet – you are." She produced another piece of a roll from her pocket and handed it to her friend. "And the baker gave me a discount."

Maria tore off half of the roll and offered the other half back. Sarah shook her head and pushed it back. "Keep it for tomorrow. I don't know how long the newspaper business is going to agree with me."

Single clock on the wall tolled seven o'clock. "Sam should be home soon," Maria muttered. "You're welcome to stay."

Sarah smiled. "No thanks. I actually should be going. Tell the kids goodbye for me, 'kay?"

Maria nodded as she exited the room. She sighed as the door closed behind her guardian angel, remembering the smile she had received. Sarah did a good job at hiding how tired she was, how much poverty and hunger were grating on her, but it was beginning to show in spite of her efforts. Maria hoped and prayed that Fortune would smile upon her friend before the young woman became just like everyone else in the Narrows – truly desperate.

As Sarah stepped back out into the icy air of the streets, she felt tears sliding unbidden down her face. Quickly, she stopped herself from crying, knowing full well how much the effort would drain her of needed water. She hadn't had anything to drink for two days, and had been bereft of food for nearly two weeks. But she would gladly bear the pain of thirst and starvation to bring just a little hope into the lives of Maria and her family. Leaning against the mostly brick-less wall of the building, she retched violently, the bile burning her throat and mouth, the convulsions sending her to her knees. Her stomach was not very happy with her for giving away another meal. She would have to eat tomorrow – no exceptions.

Up above her, on top of the building, the dark, silent form of a man in a cape observed her actions. He watched her push herself up from the ground, her body shaking with the effort. He watched her force herself to walk further down the alley, closer to the dumpster in the middle. For a moment he was afraid that she'd realized his presence when she raised her face to gaze at a lit window near the top of the building, but knew that he remained hidden from her sight when she turned a long box around on the ground and crawled in behind the dumpster, completely invisible to anyone not motivated enough to bear the stench of the dumpster long enough to look around it. He stayed there for a while, watching the place where she'd disappeared from the world, and wondered to himself how people like her could end up in the Narrows.


	4. Chapter 4

Matthew slipped outside onto the balcony. It was raining, and he felt like the water falling from the sky was simply a mockery of the water dripping from his eyes. His parents were screaming at each other behind the curtain that separated the balcony from the main apartment, their words echoing off of the wet brick walls of surrounding buildings and out into the dark streets. Something about his father losing another job. Matthew knew they loved each other well enough, but times were hard and the lack of money was an enormous cloud over a family as big as theirs.

He heard a noise above him and to the right. Immediately he looked up towards the sound, his eyes falling upon the dark, nearly indistinguishable form of a man scaling a wall.

"It's you, isn't it," he said, keeping his voice soft in order not to let his parents overhear him. "Everyone's been talking about you."

"Get in here!" his father shouted, realizing for the first time that Matthew was not in the apartment. Matthew realized that he didn't have much time. He looked back at the Batman.

"The other kids won't believe me."

The Batman hesitated, wondering what he could give the boy on the balcony. He folded up the small periscope he'd been using to look into a window above and tossed it to the boy.

Matthew looked down at the object in his hands with awe, and then looked up to thank the masked man. But the Batman had already disappeared up the wall.

------ ------------------ -------

Sarah laid down against the wet concrete of the rooftops, feeling safe and at peace for the first time in months. The rain soaked through her clothes to infuse itself in her body until she felt as if her very blood was running with rainwater. She took a deep breath of the chill, damp air, allowing the cold to seep into her fingertips and replace the heat of her anger.

She'd lost her daily job at the news stand – the vendor accused her of misconduct when a man on the street gave her a twenty in exchange for a paper and didn't want the change back. She'd known that the source of income wouldn't last for long, but she'd hoped that it wouldn't end because of someone else. Frustrated, she'd come to the rooftops to escape the world, and it had begun to rain.

She allowed her mind to wander through her day. The morning had been alright. The afternoon had sucked. Since that guy with the twenty – he'd looked oddly familiar – everything had gone downhill. The rain clouds hovering overhead promised her a wet and dismal evening throughout the day. As she'd walked down the sidewalk looking for something – anything – to do, she'd been pushed and shoved to no end as if the people going the opposite direction could walk right through her without noticing. Even the concrete beneath her feet seemed to have it out for her, causing her to trip and stumble every half hour or so – her clumsiness a fine tribute to the stress caused by sleeping behind dumpsters and lying down on rooftops.

The rain mercilessly pelted her face, dripping in her eyes and running into her slightly open mouth. She savored the cold, wet feel of the water on her skin, allowing it to slowly wash away the day, as if her troubles would flow into the gutter along with the dirt and grime on her clothes and skin. She focused on breathing, allowing the simple, constant rhythm to drive her frustration from her overly active mind.

A loud crash from the street below her shook her from her rain-soaked reverie and she pushed herself up from the puddle she'd been lying in to see what was the matter. A man had fallen from a fourth-story window – or so she gathered from the single open window on the fourth floor in the building across the way. She watched as he rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames burning through his clothes. The air above him steamed as the rain hit his body. He staggered, as if he couldn't quite keep his feet, into an alley to Sarah's right.

Suddenly, a strangely shaped grappling hook caught the edge of the building on which Sarah was standing. The man – for Sarah assumed that it was a man – pulled himself up and over the ledge, rolling painfully to the cement with a grunt. The rain blurred Sarah's vision, impairing her ability to see him clearly. By the time she reached him, he had produced a cell phone and was muttering into the speaker.

"Alfred," he croaked. "Alfred. Help me." Exhausted by the effort of speaking, he laid his head back down on the ground, never even noticing the shocked woman looming over his semi-inert form. He closed his eyes, trying to block the images that flashed before him. A well. Bats everywhere. Somehow mixed with the rain. But no, every raindrop was the tip of a creature's wing brushing against him.

Sarah heard him whimper softly. A worried voice drifting up from the phone he had left on the ground. Forcing her body into action past the realization of exactly what was lying before her, she picked up the phone as she knelt to his side, checking his pulse and shielding his face from the rain with her body. He opened his eyes when he felt her fingertips against the underside of his chin.

"Hello?" she spoke into the phone, trying to simultaneously calm the panicking man at her knees.

"Who is this?" the voice on the other end of the line demanded, his words a mixture of worry and anger.

"It doesn't matter right now," she stated firmly, cutting off that direction of the conversation for another time. "You should hurry. He's in pretty bad shape."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there"

"P-p-poison," the man on the floor muttered, only half-audible past the rain.

"He says he's been poisoned."

The other end was silent for a moment, stunned by the statement. "Where are you?"

"On the rooftops in the Narrows. I'll see if I can get him down to the ground without drawing attention."

"Stay on the line," he ordered, half afraid she would hang up the phone. "I'm tracking its location."

"Sure. I'll try to keep it open." She put the device on speakerphone so she would be able to hear when he was getting close, then looked down at the Batman, wondering how on earth she was going to be able to get him down.

"Alfred," he muttered, half moaning.

"It's okay," she said, half trying to convince herself of what she was saying. "It's going to be okay. I've gotta get you down to the ground so that Alfred can take you home."

"Alfred…"

"Damn," she mumbled. "I thought the Batman would be a bit more lucid than this. You're a little delusional right now, mister."

He moaned again, the sound faint and heart wrenching. She pushed herself to her feet and moved to the edge of the building, looking over the side at the ground. It was a fair distance, but she would have to chance it. There was no chance she could get the Batman through the building without anyone noticing. She picked up the grappling gun he had dropped on the rooftop, examining it carefully. When she felt satisfied that she knew kind of how it worked, Sarah hooked it to the ledge of the wall. She turned to retrieve the hero of Gotham, lifting him off the floor with no little difficulty. Her body strained against his weight even as he futilely protested against being moved so roughly.

"I'm almost there," Alfred's voice drifted up from the phone.

"We're almost there," she echoed softly, dragging the Batman's dead weight through the puddles that had formed on the cement. She leaned against the ledge of the building, resting the man against her shoulder as she fumbled for the grappling gun. "Hold on."

She eased them both off the edge, praying with all her might that the line would hold. As Batman's full weight rested against her, gravity pulling him down, she began to pray that her belt loop, rather than the line, wouldn't tear under the strain of holding two bodies above the ground. Slowly, she began to move down the wall, glad that the grappling gun was made well enough to allow her to go down as well as up. She slipped only once, catching Batman just before he fell to the ground. She began to sweat in the rain with the effort of keeping them both from falling. Her jeans were ripping. She had to hurry.

She paused momentarily as a car parked itself at the mouth of the alley, hoping that they hadn't been seen. When Alfred's voice assured her of his arrival from the phone, she doubled her speed, taking larger steps against the wall as her pants continued to tear. Three feet from the ground, a pair of hands came from behind her to help her out. Batman's weight was eased off of her and she dropped the rest of the way to the cement in exhaustion. She took the grappling gun out from her torn, decrepit belt loop and looked at the buttons on the surface. Taking a guess, she pressed one. The hook flew down from the rooftop with graceful ease and returned to the gun with a satisfying click. Her legs shook beneath her own meager weight.

An old man Sarah assumed was Alfred was dragging Batman to his car. She went to help, forcing her body to exert more energy than she thought she had. The two of them succeeded in shoving the man's body into the back seat, and Alfred rushed to the driver's seat. Sarah prepared herself mentally to watch them go.

The older man leaned out the passenger side window to look at her sternly. "What are you waiting for? Get in! Hurry!"

Sarah hesitated, not daring to believe her ears. Shock crossed her features. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she ran to the car and jumped in, not bothering to buckle her seatbelt. They sped through the night, fearless of cops and traffic tickets. Sarah determinedly asked no questions, knowing there would be plenty of time for that later. Instead, she focused her attention on the mumbling man lying in the back seat. He kept muttering the word "poison" over and over again, as if it were the only thing he could think about. His eyes were half closed, somewhere between sleep and alert. He seemed to be seeing things that she could not, flinching and rolling on the seat every now and again as if he were being attacked by something.

She glanced up at Alfred, whose worry-filled eyes were decidedly fixed on the road. For the first time in a long time, Sarah felt absolutely helpless. There was nothing she could do for either of them – nothing she could say that could ease Alfred's worry or the Batman's pain. So she sat in her seat, wondering again why she was there, and held back tears of frustration as the night began to catch up with her. She wanted so badly to know how to fix it all.


End file.
